Very little clicked for Josh Allen in a frustrating contest on Thursday evening against the Texans.
And still he came close to driving the Bills to a victory before an late pick in the last moments sealed their fate in a close loss.
Allen endured consecutive sacks on the team's last drive, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (7-4) gained significant yardage on a short pass from Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, a Texans defender picked off Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.
“We had a chance to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Josh Allen stated. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved difficult for Allen to get anything going on a evening he was brought down a career-high on eight occasions and hit four other times. The QB threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after producing six touchdowns in a victory over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they hit our quarterback 12 times, I don’t like that,” Bills coach McDermott commented. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It’s just not a safe way to compete and it isn't a good way to keep our quarterback healthy for the rest of the season. We’ve got to play better.”
Josh Allen was slow to get up after a tackle in the first half. He said he was OK and that his shoulder “went a little numb” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was questioned about being contacted so many times on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple myself. I’ve got to be better at disposing of the football. Too many times, I found myself losing ground.”
Allen surrendered 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had two and a half tackles for loss to lead the Texans. His second one came when he almost sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and Anderson rose and pursued him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.
The Bills played for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was late to a team meeting before their last game. He was earlier held out for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in Week 5 after additionally being late for a team session.
No change. We are taking it one day at a time,” McDermott said. “I felt he had a better week, but we are handling it step by step. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that provide the best chance.”
Shakir led the Bills with eight receptions for 110 yards and Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
Allen was frustrated that the Bills were unable to execute in crucial moments.
In the end, we must execute, and we didn’t do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “Whatever scenario and any condition, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
